Moira Furnace Museum and Country Park
About
Moira Furnace is a blast furnace built in 1804 on the bank of the Ashby-de-la-Zouch Canal by Francis Rawdon-Hastings, Earl of Moira, who owned coal and ironstone on the Ashby Woulds and intended to smelt the one with the other. It did not work. The furnace was blown in and out over a handful of years, produced iron of poor quality, proved impossible to run economically, and was abandoned as an ironworks within about seven years of being finished.
That failure is precisely why it survives. A furnace that succeeded would have been rebuilt, enlarged and eventually swept away as blast furnace practice changed through the nineteenth century; Moira, having stopped almost immediately, was never modernised. The charging house, the casting arch, the bridge house and the great mass of the stack all remain much as they were built, and the result is one of the most complete surviving early nineteenth-century blast furnaces anywhere in Europe — a working diagram of how iron was made at the very beginning of the industrial century, left standing by accident.
After the ironworks closed the building found other uses: lime was burned in kilns beside it, and the structure was converted into cottages, so that families lived inside the furnace for well over a century. The museum interprets all these phases, along with the canal that was built to serve the works, the Ashby Woulds coalfield the earl was exploiting, and the surrounding landscape, which is now part of the National Forest and has been comprehensively replanted over ground that was formerly pit and spoil.
Around the furnace the site has grown into a small complex: craft workshops in the adjoining buildings, a country park along the canal, a tea room, and trips on the narrowboat Joseph Wilkes from the basin outside. Admission to the museum is charged and modest, the country park and car parks are free and open all year, and the museum itself closes from November until the spring.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- The museum opens weekends and bank holidays from late March to the end of October, plus weekdays other than Wednesdays during school holidays.
- From 1 November until the spring the museum, shop and narrowboat are shut, though the country park stays open.
- The country park, car parks and toilets are free all year, so the canal-side site is worth a visit even when the museum is closed.
- Book a trip on the narrowboat Joseph Wilkes in advance if you want one; trips run on published dates.
- Admission is inexpensive — a family of four costs GBP 10.00 — and children under 3 go free.
- Wear shoes with grip: the upper levels of the furnace involve stairs, low headroom and uneven surfaces.
- Conkers, the National Forest discovery centre, is a twenty-minute walk along the canal and makes an easy combined day out.
- Ask staff to explain the casting arch — following the process from charging house to casting floor is what makes the building intelligible.
Highlights
The Blast Furnace Itself
The furnace is the exhibit. Built in 1804 for the Earl of Moira, it stands substantially as constructed, with the charging house at the top where ore, coke and limestone were tipped in, the casting arch at the bottom where molten iron ran out into sand moulds, and the enormous masonry stack between them.
Visitors can move through the structure and follow the process physically, from raw material to cast metal, in a way that is impossible at furnaces which were rebuilt every few decades.
Very few early nineteenth-century blast furnaces survive anywhere in this condition.
A Failure That Preserved Itself
Moira Furnace worked only intermittently between about 1806 and 1811 and made iron of poor quality throughout, defeated by the character of the local ironstone, the coal available to coke and the difficulty of running a furnace of this design economically. The venture was abandoned. That commercial failure is the reason the building is intact: successful furnaces were continually enlarged and eventually demolished, while Moira simply stopped and stood still.
The museum makes this argument explicitly, and it is one of the most instructive things about the site.
Living Inside a Furnace
After the ironworks closed, the structure was put to other uses: lime was burned in kilns alongside it, and the building was subdivided into cottages, so that families lived inside the furnace for well over a century, raising children in rooms cut into a blast furnace stack. Displays cover this domestic afterlife with photographs and recollections, and it is often what visitors remember longest — a reminder that industrial monuments generally had long second lives before anybody thought of preserving them.
The Ashby Canal and Bath Yard Basin
The furnace stands beside the Ashby-de-la-Zouch Canal, which was cut to move coal and lime off the Ashby Woulds and which made an ironworks in this location conceivable at all. The basin outside the furnace, the wharves and the towpath survive, and the canal is now the spine of the country park. Interpretation covers the waterway's construction, the traffic it carried, its long decline as mining subsidence closed the northern section, and the restoration work that has been undertaken on it.
Collections
Moira Furnace is a blast furnace of 1804, built for Francis Rawdon-Hastings, Earl of Moira, on the bank of the Ashby-de-la-Zouch Canal and abandoned as an ironworks within about seven years because it could not produce good iron economically. Because it was never modernised it survives largely as built — charging house, casting arch, bridge house and stack — and is among the most complete early nineteenth-century blast furnaces in Europe; the structure is the museum's principal exhibit.
Displays interpret the ironmaking process, the Ashby Woulds coalfield and ironstone the venture was intended to exploit, the canal built to serve it, the lime kilns that operated afterwards, and the building's long later use as cottages.
The site includes craft workshops, a tea room, a free country park along the canal within the National Forest, and public trips on the narrowboat Joseph Wilkes from the basin outside.
Making Iron at Moira
The furnace structure and the ironmaking process, from charging house to casting arch.
Coal, Lime and Canal
The Ashby Woulds coalfield, the lime kilns and the Ashby-de-la-Zouch Canal that served them.
The Furnace as a Home
The building's conversion into cottages and the families who lived inside it for over a century.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.